Election 2012: It’s in the books

November 8, 2012

Poll workers had their hands full yesterday making sure the election ran smoothly, and fairly. Pictured above working at the Veterans Building, from left, are Nancy Sedlacek, Jackie Linville, Joleen McCandless Linder and Debbie Kleeb. Photo by Deb McCaslin

Barack Obama may have been declared the winner of the presidential race Tuesday night, but the state of Nebraska did not agree. And with Custer County and surrounding areas reporting high numbers of voters going to the polls, Mitt Romney was the clear favorite here.
In the race for U.S. Senate the distance between Deb Fischer and Bob Kerrey was about as great as in the presidential race, with Fischer taking this area by a landslide. Custer County voters turned in 4,245 ballots for Fischer, compared to 1,018 for Kerrey.
Republican Adrian Smith also heavily defeated his opponent, Mark Sullivan, in Custer County - 4,231 to 961.
Some of the local races, however, were much closer than that. While all precincts have been counted, these numbers are not yet official. There are still quite a number of absentee, provisional and paper ballots to count. The paper ballots are the result of the high voter turnout - nearly 65 percent in Custer County - which caused some polling places to run out of ballots.
Custer County Clerk Conni Gracey says that was a common problem Tuesday all across the state, with larger than average numbers going to the polls. She explains that the counting machines cannot read the paper ballots, and therefore they must be counted by hand. Gracey estimates it will be Friday afternoon before the official numbers for Custer County are in.

UNOFFICIAL results for Custer County’s contested races are as follows:

UNOFFICIAL Hooker Co. results in contested races:
Mullen school board: Barb Svoboda - 246, Denise Vinton - 327, Lyle Phillips - 229
Village of Mullen: Bill Sonnenfelt - 181, Melvin McIntosh - 171, Jeffrey Jacobs - 88
Hooker County had a voting machine go down, and they had to scramble to find another. They were able to locate one close by and sent the Sheriff’s Office to pick it up. The county reports a 67.5 percent voter turnout.